Description:In this workshop, students sharpen their skills as storytellers, drawing from their own experience, but linking their narratives to larger, timely themes—mixing the personal and political. Students keep a journal, each week concentrating on a different aspect of craft. Three student works are carefully critiqued in every session. Supplementary readings explore race, class, post-colonialism, and war, among other subjects, and include short essays, memoir, reportage, and travel writing by Katherine Boo, Haruki Murakami, Studs Terkel, Liao Yuwi, Chang-Rae Lee, Svetlana Alexievich, George Packer, Jonathan Franzen, V.S. Naipaul, Jonathan Raban, Gay Talese, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Sherman Alexie, and others.